


Delicate

by hunters_retreat



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Future Fic, Hanahaki Disease, Language of Flowers, M/M, Past Fic, Time travel messes everything up, Uncle/Nephew Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 04:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17217125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: “The world is grey and red and we break over metal and we break over battlefields and trenches, and we bleed until there isn’t anything left.  There’s nothing so delicate in the future.  Hell, there’s nothing so delicate in the lives we live right now.  How fucking ironic is it, to almost die from flowers in your lungs and a broken heart?”





	Delicate

**Author's Note:**

> I know there aren't many of us out there, still on the Derek/John ship, but I can't quite stop loving them. And to be honest, I think this is my favorite things I've ever written for them. 
> 
> Also, i'm a little obsessed over John and Derek remember 1st differently because of the time travel aspect of Derek's life. So echoes like this happen :P Hope someone out there enjoys it :p

 

Rain turned everything to oily mud as ash and muck mixed under his feet.  As a child, Derek Reese had loved the rain.  He’d spent hours drawing by the window, pictures of flowers and family and friends. When his mother let him, he’d splash in puddles and dig grubby hands into the mud and make pies he pretended to sell to his baby brother.

Back then, rain made the world clean.  It brightened the colors and washed away the sins of the world. 

Now, everything was awash in shades of gunmetal grey or blood red and there was no amount of water to wash away the ugliness of the world. 

The only good thing about the rain was that it played havoc with some of Sky-net’s systems so they weren’t likely to be hit by anything.  Patrols still went out, but morale was always a little higher.  Maybe it was the lack of attacks.  Maybe it was that the rain drowned out sight of the damned world around them.  Maybe it was because the sound of the rain was louder in the tunnels than the sound of metal overhead.

Derek would never understand what most people thought.  His days didn’t get better or worse.  They were always the same.  And if today there was less chance of an attack, he’d use the time to check his gear and clean his weapons and catch up on sleep. 

“Heard Connor was on his way here,” one of the guys said.

Derek grunted at the news but everyone knew he was far more aware of Connor’s whereabouts than most.  Kyle was never far from the man’s side.  As much as Derek preferred to be with his brother, at least Kyle was close to Connor, because the man was never easy to take in a fight and he was never surprised.

“Come on, Reese.  What do you know?”

Derek looked at the guys and shrugged.  “He came in this morning right before the storm hit.  Called all the big guns into a meeting.  Guess we’ll see if all the rumors are true once they get out.”

No one knew the truth, but there were plenty of rumors going around about what Connor was planning, what all the major repositioning and moves had been about, but no one knew the truth.  Not even Kyle could tell Derek what Connor was thinking these days.

“Keep dry,” Derek said as he walked away from the others.  His watch was over with the new arrivals and the last thing he wanted was to get grilled.  He didn’t care about Connor’s inner circle or his plans.  All he cared about was keeping Kyle and Connor safe.

The trudge back to his little corner of hell helped him warm up a bit, dry out a little.  There wasn’t much privacy these days, but he had an old store room, not much more than a closet, but it had an actual door, which was more than most.  He usually shared it with Kyle but lately he’d stop coming back to fall asleep.  Derek thought he might have caught the favor of some girl.  He hoped.  There was something creepy about the way he held onto the photo of Connor’s mother.  Derek never wanted to know why Connor gave it to him, or what he’d said to Kyle to make him treasure it so much.  There were some secrets even brothers kept.

He closed the door to his room and stripped out of his muddy boots and clothes.  He had a fresh set waiting.  Rain days meant plenty of water for the washing and cavern dwellers handed out clean clothes like they were candy.  Even better, to Derek’s mind.  A basin of fresh water had been brought in as well, though he didn’t know who the hell would have done that. 

A single flower floated on the water.  White petals.  In a world of grey and splattered red, white was unthinkable.  Beauty, unheard of.  And yet, a white rainflower sat on the top of the water, lovely and delicate and nothing like this world.

Derek pulled on a fresh set of underwear and pants but he stopped and sat on the bed before he could dress further.  The while flower called to him and he couldn’t help but raise it from the water and hold it between his gnarled hands. 

“Rainflower,” he heard from the doorway.  He let out a deep breath but didn’t look up, even as the door closed.  “It means I must atone for my sins, and I will never forget you.  It means, I love you too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The language of flowers,” John Connor said.  “I doubt anyone remembers, but there was a time when people could speak to each other with just the color and type of flower they gave.”

“And you mean all that?” Derek asked with a wry smile.

“Maybe I just thought it was something to brightened up a dreary day.”

Derek put the flower back in the basin and watched it float.  “Kyle hasn’t come back here today.”

“He won’t,” Connor said quietly.  Confidently. 

Derek nodded.  “Not sure what you want then.”

“What I always want,” Connor answered.  “I just might be brave enough to say it this time.”

Derek snorted at that because Connor wasn’t exactly shy about the things he needed.  “When have you ever been a coward?”

There was something in his eyes then, something Derek had never seen before.  Not even at the other end of a T’s gaze.  Connor really was afraid of something.

“What is it?”

Before he could answer, Connor double over with a cough.  Derek caught him, moved him to the bed, but he saw him wipe his mouth with a bandana and something white caught the edges of the gray fabric. 

“Water?” Connor asked.

Derek got up to pour it and notices that Connor had tossed the bandana in the trash as Derek got his canteen.  Connor took a long drink and Derek watched.  Waited.

“What are you here for, Connor?”

“John.  We’ve been friends for years.  Why can’t you remember to call me John?”

Derek shook his head.  “Connor is the name of a military man, a soldier.  Someone meant to die in battle or see us through it.  John is …” he wasn’t sure how to explain it.  “John is someone I could lose.”

Connor closed his eyes and took a deep breath and Derek had no idea what to do with this.  He wasn’t in Connor’s inner circle.  He didn’t plan raids or help with tactical analysis.  He was too focused on his brother for that sort of thing, but he was always with Kyle, when he could be.  Which meant spending a lot of time around Connor too.  They were friends, even if Derek never really talked about it to anyone else.  He admired Connor.  He was brave and handsome and a hell of a leader.  He made you believe.  He made you strong. 

Sometimes though, Derek got to see this side of him.  Just… the man who had inherited a battle that they shouldn’t be able to win.  He took a seat next to him. 

“Thanks for the flower,” he said with a small smile. 

Connor should have smiled at that.  He should have laughed or made some random comment about the use of a rainflower, but his eyes tightened around the edge and he stared at Derek. 

“They’re yours.  I wouldn’t have them if it weren’t for you.”

Before Derek could ask what that even meant, Connor shifted and his lips were pressed to Derek’s.  Connor’s hand gripped him around the neck and held him in place as Connor licked across the seam of his lips.

Derek had taken lovers before, men and women, but Connor was too close to him.  It wasn’t his position with the rebellion that made this dangerous.  He was already too close to Derek’s heart.  He was… this crossed lines Derek had been so careful not to cross.

But it was Connor and there wasn’t much he could ask Derek that he wouldn’t willingly give.  Including his damn bleeding heart.

He opened to Connor, to John, and when he was pressed back into the mattress, he went willingly.

 

***

In the early morning hours, John crawled out of bed and dressed with his usual efficient movements.  Not sign that he’d confessed his damn heart and taken Derek’s with his words.  When he was done, he leaned back over Derek and pressed another kiss to his lips. 

“Something big is happening tonight.  You’ll be part of the second wave.  As soon as you get word that the first wave is in, you find me.”

“Why?  John, what’s happening?”

John stood up and let out a deep breath.  He looked over at the rainflower still floating in the water basin and caressed it with one finger.  He stood up tall then and took a few steps away.  When he was at the door, he looked back at Derek.

“That’s an order, soldier.”

“Yes, Sir.”

When John left and Derek got dressed, he looked in the trash and found the bandana.  A rainflower lay in the center, bloodied and broken. 

 

***

 

Two years .  Two years and no amount of alcohol would ever be able to take the memory from him.  The moment he fell in love with John Connor was forever etched into his heart.  The moment he was betrayed by him was also.  They were the same moments, because John Connor had already planned to send Kyle into the past to die.   And by asking him there for the second wave, he’d known he was going to send Derek into the past as well. 

There were moments when Derek saw Connor in the boy.  Moments where the hard edge of the future shone like the glint of sunlight off metal.  The boy despised him though.  Derek was from a world he could never understand until he lived it.  He hated the way Derek drilled him, hated the monsters that came after them, and he hated the closed off way that Derek spoke of the world he knew.

Derek had no ability to tell him about rainy days and rain flowers.  Of the time the three of them had found a canyon with a fresh water spring and skinny dipped until they were pruny and exhausted and had laughed more in one afternoon that they had in years.

It was the last time Derek could remember laughing openly like that.  Before John began formulating his big plans and they had still just been a couple soldiers on their way to a meet up. 

He had no ability to speak of his heart and how fucked up he was, because he’d been right all those years ago.  John was someone he lost.  And this John, John Baum, was something beyond his reach.  Derek could only offer blood-stained hands and a bruised heart to someone who deserved brilliance and beauty.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened.  He closed his eyes and let the cough come.  He could try to fight it, but it never went away and it only hurt worse if he struggled against it. 

He nearly double over with the intensity and he thought of that night again, of John in his bed and a bloodied fucking bandana.  Same curse.  Same two men. 

Time travel fucked everything up.

He reached beside the bed and pulled the trash can close.  His throat felt heavy but scraped thin.  He had no breath, only choked off gasps as he tried to force the obstruction from him airways.  He felt thin roots dragging along the back of his throat even as soft flower petals pressed into the roof of his mouth. 

It took a few minutes, but the flowers were spit into the trash and he took long gulps of air.  He dropped the can and sat back on the bed, his back pressed to the wall as he closed his eyes and just breathed. 

“White tulips,” he heard from the doorway.  He let out a sharp hiss but John didn’t stop.  “They mean forgiveness. Remembrance.  Worthiness.  Sincerity.” 

“What are you doing, John?”

“There was a time when people could speak to each other with just the color and type of flower they gave.”

“I’ve heard that before.”  He didn’t want to hear it now.  It was inevitable, really.  Because John Fucking Connor knew the truth.  He knew the past when he sent Derek back and there was no way in hell he sent him to die.  Even if it meant sending him to his younger self.  Derek didn’t want to believe.  Even when the flowers started, he didn’t want to believe.  Because John Connor wasn’t the same as John Baum and even as John grew, even as he become more Connor than Baum, Derek didn’t believe that the young man before him could ever love someone as broken as he was.

But then again, Derek had never really known just how fucked up John was.  No one in the future thought it.  Derek knew now though.  John was raised to be the messiah.  Mankind’s savior.  The last defense against humanity’s ego-driven downfall.  John didn’t have friends and he didn’t have vacations.  He didn’t get school and days off and first loves.  He trained.  He learned to assimilate with the locals.  He learned to play the part of an average teen.  His friends growing up were whatever locals could teach him what his mother thought he needed next.  His first girlfriend was someone he knew was from the future and he’d let her pretend.  His first love … well … Derek still didn’t believe it.  But here he was sounding so damn much like the John of the future.

The man Derek had loved, whom he’d loved again, in another time and place.

“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?” John asked.

He sat beside Derek on the bed and Derek didn’t bother to open his eyes.  He didn’t bother to ask how John knew it was him.  It wasn’t like Derek got out a lot. 

“What do I need to forgive you for, John?” he asked.

“For getting your brother killed.  For sending you back to a time without him.”

“Kyle is here.  He might not know me, but he’s here.   You gave me a chance to save him.  It’s the best I can hope for now.”

“And the flowers?” John asked.

“It takes a while.”

“What would you know about it?”

“It doesn’t happen in the future.  Not often.  That’s not the life we have.  You don’t … pine away for someone.  No one has the time for that.  I researched it when I got here though.”

“Because not often isn’t never,” John said.  “Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.  He’s cured.  Now I’m the one infected.”

“You’re not.”

“The tulips would disagree with you, John.”

He felt the bed shift under him but he didn’t open his eyes, not even when he felt John settle on his lap, knees braced around Derek’s hips and his hands settled on his shoulders. 

“You don’t have to be.  You just have to accept the truth.”

“What truth is that?”

“That no matter where you end up, no matter _when_ you end up, I will always love you.”

  Derek opened his eyes then and looked up at John.  He was so damn young, so much fire and passion, but behind it all was a will of steal.  Sarah Connor hadn’t put that there.  No.  He was born of it. 

He felt it then.  Felt the truth settle.  Felt the reality of it.  Felt the weight of it in his heart just as sure as he felt John’s weight in his lap. 

“I couldn’t understand,” Derek said softly.  “When I got here and I saw you.  When I felt it begin.  I knew you loved me, in the future.  Just like I loved you.  And yet you had it there.  I had it here.  How the hell does that happen?  The you in the future already knew this moment.  The me, right now, I already know it.  So how the hell did we both end up like this?”

“You’ve said it before,” John answered softly.  “I was John Baum.  I was always going to be John Connor, but I wasn’t yet.  Maybe I’ve become enough like him that you can finally see it.  Maybe, you just saw enough of me to finally love me for who I am, and not the man I’m supposed to become.  I don’t know, but in some ways, we’re two different people.  Maybe, it’s the same in the future.  Or maybe, it’s because John Connor knew Derek Reese and loved him since he was 18 years old and the man he loved didn’t even know him.  That love couldn’t be returned because they’d never met.”

“Much like Derek Reese was in love with John Connor, until he was sent back in time to meet the 16-year-old version who didn’t know him from any other soldier.”

“Maybe,” John said softly. 

“It’s fucked up,” Derek said with a sigh.  “The world is grey and red and we break over metal and we break over battlefields and trenches, and we bleed until there isn’t anything left.  There’s nothing so delicate in the future.  Hell, there’s nothing so delicate in the lives we live right now.  How fucking ironic is it, to almost die from flowers in your lungs and a broken heart?”

“The irony isn’t to die of beauty in a world without, Derek,” John said softly.  “The irony is that the world will die and men will keep fighting in a world without beauty to fight for.  Maybe, just maybe, John Connor needed something delicate to believe in.”

“Delicate breaks, John.”

“So do all men.  But sometimes, protecting something delicate gives them the strength to do the impossible and overcome their own natures.  Something delicate can change the world.”


End file.
